Living up to perfect SAT? No worries

As the pages of the calendar turn, Kellie Lu is like many 12th-grade students who can see their high-school diplomas rapidly appearing on the horizon.

Roger Phillips

As the pages of the calendar turn, Kellie Lu is like many 12th-grade students who can see their high-school diplomas rapidly appearing on the horizon.

"Honestly, I've been hit by senioritis," Lu admitted last week as she walked across the Lincoln High campus. "I haven't been studying as much as I should."

But in at least one sense, the 17-year-old Lu isn't like most high-school seniors. A year ago, she took the Scholastic Aptitude Test as she began the process of gaining acceptance to the college of her choice. She recorded a score of 2,400. That's a perfect score, folks.

How rare is SAT perfection? According to the College Board, for every 10,000 students who take the SAT, the number recording perfect scores could sit together on a sofa, with room to spare.

Lu is the U.S.-born older daughter of two doctors who immigrated to the United States from China. She's applied to numerous colleges and plans to major in mathematics or electrical engineering.

She plays the violin, has volunteered as a math tutor at the Margaret K. Troke Branch Library in Stockton and recently applied with the U.S. Department of Education's Presidential Scholars Program, which annually honors a select group of high school seniors.

Question: You have called your perfect SAT score "a scarlet number." Do you ever get tired of the attention?

Answer: Sometimes when I meet people it's the first thing they know about me. I feel a little pressure from that. Sometimes I feel like I have to live up to it. But in general it's not really a negative or a positive thing. It's just really a number. It's just really a test score.

Q: Do you have a first choice among the colleges to which you have applied?

A: I'm still waiting on decisions. I'm applying to everywhere and seeing which places accept me.

Q: With a perfect SAT, do you seriously think there's a college that would reject you?

A: Colleges look for a lot more than just test scores. They evaluate you as a person. There are a lot of other factors, like your extracurricular activities, your personal statement, your teacher recommendations. That's why I think there's a chance.

Q: Would you summarize the message you tried to convey in your personal statement?

A: It was about spiders and overcoming the fear of spiders. For me the spiders represented the unknown. I had an unconscious fear of spiders when I was little. When I first saw a spider I would run away. As human beings we naturally harbor prejudice against things we don't understand.

Q: So you were making an analogy to society?

A: That was kind of what my essay was about. Spiders were so foreign to me, creatures with these unearthly legs and freaky eyes. I realized it was just because you're afraid of things you don't understand.

It would be like racial prejudice. It's about understanding where that comes from, understanding that perception. I've come to realize when I'm being prejudiced, when I'm judging others or when I'm unconsciously afraid of something that doesn't need to be feared.